Thursday, June 21, 2012

To commemorate my third father’s day as a father, I thought
I would put on paper (or internet) the ever growing list of things I have
learned to this point.By learned I
don’t mean adjusted my behavior for necessarily, more so observed and tried to
not act uponJAnd to be clear my tongue is planted firmly
in my cheek, and being a father is one of the greatest gifts one can receive.

1)Patience
with children is different than regular patience.Its one thing to be able to keep your calm at
work while someone is driving you crazy.It’s another thing to keep your cool while you have a screaming and
kicking toddler laying on the floor in front (possibly spitting on you) of you
who has been a pill all day because she refused to take a good nap and is about
as likely to surrender as Mel Gibson in Braveheart, on a day when you have also
had a cranky infant who doesn’t like the earth or being on it, and possibly
when its like 100 or 0 outside.That’s
called Megapatience.And on some days
you need Megapatience, and most days its hard to find.I struggle with it more than I should.

2)You
didn’t know what laughter was before.I mean we all have those days where our faces hurt from laughing –
usually its probably that one time you hung out with me or for me it’s the day
when I was left to my thoughts and cracked myself up because of how witty I am
(hopefully you understand I am being very sarcastic with those comments), but
sitting at the dinner table and conversing with Emma about pretty much anything
is funny, and in a whole different and new way that you can’t replicate. Yes that was one sentence, I am too lazy to revise it to be better grammar.

3)Public
displays of potty are common.We all
ask where the restroom is sometimes.But
with Emma (and most toddlers) it’s usually followed by her telling the
waitress/cashier/other random person that she is going to go potty or poopoo
andpossibly followed by telling said
person some details after the fact.Its
usually followed by awkward laughter by the counterpart.What would the world be like if you told your
waiter you had to go potty really badly?Try it sometime.

4)Naptime
is no longer a happy place.Naptime
is now the time when you work your tail off to get something done before
naptime is over.Remember the good old
days when nap time meant YOU got to take a nap while watching golf, which would
be followed by 30 min of spacing out and trying to get motivated to run to
chipotle for your second meal of the day there?Well maybe you don’t, but I do.

5)Bedtime
is now a glorious time.Kids are
great, but 8pm CST is a lovely time in our house.The kids are in bed, the 85 million bottle
parts from the day of feeding/pumping are washed, you can sit down and just
chill and watch Modern family while your wife tries (unfortunately too
successfully) to draw parallels between you and Phil while you admire Cam’s
shirts and “flare” (in a totally masculine way) and hope that you don’t have a
daughter like Haley.

6)Leaving
work is like leaving the earth to head to the moon.At work, at
least for we cube surfers, you live in this nice quiet place with clean
bathrooms, white noise, everybody walking, and air conditioning.You arrive at a place of controlled chaos
where your daughter screams “DADDY’s HERE!!!” which is great and makes you
happy, only there’s a small twinge of crazy in her voice so you are afraid that
she may be using that as a signal to other toddlers to signal the toddler
revolution.You eventually arrive home
which is a dance of preparing food and providing food to keep anger subdued
(sometimes for mom, dad, and daughters) then run around, play on the playset
(and sweat) take a bath, fight the bedtime battle, and then hit the
aforementioned 8pm its time for gloriousness barrier.I am certain that paragraph reads as
complaining, that time is great, but if it extended too much longer there
would be casualties.

7)Bed time
also has new meaning.Your bedtime
as a father is irrelevant, toddler bedtime is like a hyper exaggeration of basically
everything above.There is laughter,
which sometimes turns into crazy laughter, which sometimes morphs into having
to show patience, but then sometimes morphs into laying next to your daughter
and singing the Iowa Fight song and a hug.Its fun, its scary, its hard, its so many things in a 30-45 min timeframe
that is always being pushed by said toddler.

8)We live
in 1 volume level –LOUD.If Kinsley
goes to bed first we try to keep the volume level down so she doesn’t wake
up.Which doesn’t work.At all.Emma is loud, there is no getting around it, sometimes between the
number of words she says and the volume of words said its amazing that ears
don’t bleed.

9)I have a
new boss.I used to think, wow, our
lives revolve around Emma, its sort of like she is our boss without knowing
it.Now I know that Emma is our boss,
she likes to tell us what to do at a high volume (see previous item) and is
very, very particular.

10)Daughter
#2 seems quiet.Daughter #2 loves her big sister and laughs at her all the
time, but you notice much more when she makes sound after Daughter #1 is in
bed.Kinsley is happy go lucky, but when
Emma is in bed and Kinsley is up its like her time to shine.It will be interesting to see whether she
defers to emma when get gets older.

11)Wait, we
have a 2nd daughter?Not
that she gets completely ignored but because she is so easy and basically just
needs to be held and fed, sometimes we almost forget about her.

Miscellaneous pics from a father's day trip to Deanna Rose with Dylan and company

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About Me

This is a blog about life with a special Hawkeye Wasian. If you aren't down with Wasians we feel bad for you. If you don't like the Hawkeyes, we also feel bad for you. If you like neither, well then you are lost.